When Wendy Grew Up
by time.forgets
Summary: It was supposed to follow a formula, a pattern; a bang or a whimper. It wasn't supposed to be weekends at the mall turned longer and longer. It was never meant to be shy looks over coffee or old jazz and smoke curling around an apartment. Britta/Annie


**A/N: **My first full Community story. All characters belong to NBC etc. and Peter Pan to J.M Barrie, I have just taken them for a play around Neverland.

Britta/Annie

* * *

They were never supposed to happen. It was supposed to be the story book lovers; Jeff and Annie, the sweet and innocent fixing the old and disheartened. It was supposed to be fairy tales and tension and love that fired too fast and ran out too quickly. It was supposed to be a love that went out with a bang, an explosion. It was supposed to be Jeff and Britta, taming each other's wildness until they were nestled in bed together, brushing aside the judgements their younger selves would have cast on them. It was supposed to follow a formula, a pattern; a bang or a whimper. It wasn't supposed to be weekends at the mall turned longer and longer. It was never meant to be shy looks over coffee or old jazz and smoke curling around an apartment.

It wasn't until the second year that Annie saw Britta's apartment. She imagined chaos and mess and dishes strewn across a bench that was never clean, so when she saw tidiness to the point of impersonal, she didn't know how to respond. The apartment was like Britta; cold and hard to understand at first but then flowering into forts made of blankets, reading on the couch, letting sun creep in through windows above beds. Annie didn't understand at first how Britta could live in a place as empty as that but then music from an old record player rang through every night and vegetarian dishes boiled on the stove and awkward afternoons together turned into hushed nights on far sides of the bed.

They shared everyone's stories but their own, Annie's soft voice reading Tolstoy and Hemmingway until minds could rest enough to sleep, Britta stumbling over words she had never had to pronounce before, voice growing stronger and stronger as small pale fingers combed through her hair. Together they made a dysfunctional history for the ages but pill addictions and forgotten parents had no place where hands weaved together hesitantly and where the gap between sleeping bodies drew smaller and smaller.

It was a relationship built through silences, where Annie just watching Britta cook them stir fry conveyed a thousand things. It was a relationship filled with borrowed words, sharing quotes and reading books until voices grew weary with the strain. It was as if all their talking during the day; the arguments with Jeff, answering every question, keeping the peace at lunch, yelling in the hallway, wore them out. It was as if in their world filled with talk talk talk and everyone vying for attention and Jeff making speeches, silent touches said more than feeble words ever could.

Nights wore away eating fair-trade dark chocolate and the almost silent click of the camera Britta had learnt to use. She captured hundreds of photos; Annie sitting at the breakfast bar in her shirt, makeup smudged and hair wavy, eyes captivated by the light outside or on a thought trapped in her own head. Photos of Annie lit up by a floor lamp, scrabble pieces strewn around her. They each told a story to Britta who kept them all in an album, tucked away at the bottom of her bookshelf next to The Photographers Handbook and a dog-eared copy of Peter Pan. She had never quite understood the pull of that book until being old enough to drink, vote and sleep with people she never really wanted to wasn't enough. She wanted magic and imagination and stars that were more than something she would just listen to Annie talk about.

Annie tells her one day that she had always needed something solid to hang onto, or she would get lost. It sounds like the start of a confession, of a heartbreak-filled story of a young girl who overdosed on pills, but she doesn't say any more. Britta ends up realising that the sentence in itself is a confession, even though she has never thought of herself as something solid. She says I love you later that night, wrapped in darkness and pale limbs and feels something in her stomach or her chest beat erratically when Annie kisses her.

Her lips are soft and warm against hers. It's simple at first, just a peck, lingering as Britta breathes in bubblegum lip balm and fruity shampoo. When Annie kisses her again though, it's harder and just like all their other silent interactions; Britta understands what she's saying. When she pushes her body to lie on top she shivers. It's different, loving Annie, different to anything else she's done but her eyes are so bright in the dark and her body glows like a beacon and she just wants to be closer and closer to her. Britta falls asleep afterwards clad only in her underwear. She sighs, not waking, as Annie runs her hand across her ribs again and again. She runs fingertips down the ridges, feels the gaps between the bones and stops with her hand pressed against Britta's heart. Her skin is silk against her palm and she falls asleep to the beat.

Britta wakes first. It's different than usual, feeling so much of Annie's skin along her own. She climbs out of bed, grabs cigarettes and an apple and is outside of her building before the sun can reach its fingers into her bedroom windows. She imagines Annie hit by the light, wide eyes growing sad as she realises the bed is empty. She imagines what would have happened if she was there; a soft kiss, warm fingers stroking down her bicep, a barely clothed Annie getting out of bed just to make them coffee, the coolness of the sheets after she left.

She's running up the stairs before she knows exactly why, cigarettes in hand and apple left forgotten on the sidewalk. She runs into Annie halfway up; her eyes are red-rimmed like she had been crying but she's smiling. Britta opens her mouth to blurt out an apology but is stopped with a quiet, 'come on' and a small hand reaching out for her own. Annie leads her back to the apartment; Britta feels more nervous than the first time Annie had been there, all wide-eyed curiosity and gentle fingers running along books no one else was supposed to see. Instead of pulling Britta back to the bedroom, Annie sits her on the couch, moving almost silently to the kitchen and back armed with coffee for them both.

Britta thinks she wants to talk; about their relationship, about Britta, about last night but instead she gets a worn book from the bookshelves. Annie's voice is clear and high and soft and Britta moves so her head is resting in her lap; one small hand holding the spine open and the other running through blonde curls.

"All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up, and the way Wendy knew was this."


End file.
